German environment ministry funds moorland protection in Africa

Germany’s environment ministry (BMUV) will launch four new projects worth a total of 32 million euros to protect wetlands and peatlands abroad, it announced on the occasion of today’s World Wetlands Day. Eleven projects totalling 52 million euros are already being funded by the German government’s International Climate Initiative (IKI). In January 2022, a new project was started to protect biodiversity, carbon and water storage in the peatlands of the Congo Basin in central Africa. The Cuvette Centrale peatland in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo is the largest connected tropical peatland complex in the world, covering an estimated 145,000 square kilometres that contains about 30 gigatonnes of carbon, the ministry said in a press release.

At a national level, Germany is also pursuing moorland protection and rewetting. However, it so far has struggled to reconcile climate and biodiversity protection with the agricultural use of wetlands.